Claudia Hart, The Ruins
September 10–October 25, 2020
View The Ruins online,
presented on Mozilla Hubs
The Ruins implements still lifes, the classical form of a memento mori, to contemplate the decay of western civilization. In this work, Hart revises the canons of modernist painting and the manifestos of failed utopias. The piece is a meditation on the flow of history, expressed as a cycle of decay and regeneration. The Ruins is an antidote to a world in crisis, navigating from a Eurocentric paradigm of fixed photographic capture into a reality of malleable and inherently unstable computer simulations and systemic collapse. It presents a different notion of time, a present that viewers experience through the possibility of simulation technologies that use scientific data to model natural forces, the crystallization of past, future and present into a perpetual now.
The Ruins, takes its name from the 3-channel animation at its heart, tracking through a claustrophobic game world from which there is no escape. As the three-channel maze unravels, Hart introduces her newest interpretation of still lifes—low resolution polygon models. These models, hearkening to the idea of a poor copy or image popularized by Hito Steryl, are computer-made replications of copyright-protected paintings. Taken from works by Matisse and Picasso, patriarchs of the Modernist canon, these forms cover The Ruins in flirtatious copyright infringement. Copyright marks the beginning of Modernism as a response to the emerging technology of photography. Music composed by Edmund Campion furthers the ethos of modernism through the tactical mixing of failed Utopian ideologies: Thomas Jefferson On American Liberty; The Bauhaus Manifesto by Walter Gropius; Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s failed suburban rubber plantation in the Amazon rainforest; and Jim Jones’s sermon, The Open Door. Campion has processed and mixed each recording read by the artist, using Hart’s voice as an instrument that serves as the soundtrack to both the animation and the exhibition itself.
Music and software programming for the custom algorithmic sound engine by Edmund Campion, Director, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, UC Berkeley. Original spoken voice recording by Claudia Hart. This piece utilizes the CNMAT “Resonators~” synthesis object designed by Adrian Freed. Special thanks to Jeremy Wagner and CNMAT for support with sound installation.
The Story of The Ruins, by Jean-Marie Offenbacher, 2020, 14.5 minutes
Claudia Hart + Zaiba Jabbar of Hervisions, inside the social-VR version of The Ruins exhibition. The Poetics of The Spaces in Between is an interview for the Future Shock series, sponsored by The Fold in London. It was produced in October, 2020, inside of Hart's Mozilla Hubs social-VR Ruins, a scale model of her exhibition at bitforms gallery in NY, September-October, 2020.
Animation seen through The Ruins augmented-reality custom app when viewing The Matisse Wallpaper
Animation seen through The Ruins augmented-reality custom app when viewing The Ruins Wallpaper